MARTINE DERKS - OPEN ATELIER: SUNSET SALOON

Martine Derks, Martine Derks door Annet Busé, Zon & Schild 2021

Martine Derks is a visual artist, graduated from the Rietveld Academy in 2008 and is now training to be a spiritual counselor at the VU in Amsterdam. She is currently doing an internship at GGz Centraal, Zon en Schild in Amersfoort, where she is given the opportunity to integrate art making into spiritual care. 

During her open studio in the Beautiful Distress House she works together with different people she met in Zon en Schild, among other places. She creates a space where everyone can participate, regardless of their background: patient, visitor, local resident, artist or art lover. Spiritual counselors guide people through life's questions and usually do so in the form of conversations. But how can art be used to do this? 

Martine Derks creates opportunities to look at everyday things in a different way. The "Sunset Saloon" presents and continues some of her collaborations:  

Noortje van Kamer works in the Zon en Schild supermarket, creating sculptures from the products on the shelves and then writing poems about them. Nina van Sterkenburg is a model and can pose as Botticelli's Venus in creations made of aluminum foil. Duco Crop is working on his constellation around Beethoven taking over the walls of the Beautiful Distress House. There are also drawings by Annet Busé on display and inspiring stories by Sytske Bruning and Anouk Neskens, among others. 

Making art creates a freedom that is disconnected from existing structures, which leads to new insights that reach beyond a regular conversation. Martine Derks advocates not only the beauty of this, but also the necessity.  

1 t/m 21 Mei open by appointment via info@beautifuldistress.org all days from 11:00 until 18:00